


Complex Trauma Complex

by TracedViolet



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 01:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21028289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TracedViolet/pseuds/TracedViolet
Summary: Your name is Eridan and you like to draw. Not on paper. Not with pens. You like to draw….. with knives.





	Complex Trauma Complex

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as an emo teenager and its super tragic.

You know it's stupid. You know it's the most cliche thing you could possibly do to "cope" with the "pain". You don't really talk about it much and when you do, you try not to get too poetic about it. Because it is poetic to you.

Its calming. Peaceful. Absently etching little designs into your skin. For whatever reason it shuts up the constant voices in your head spouting off nonsense like an assault rifle stuck on burst.

They’re incredibly draining and you can only handle so much. At least that's what you tell yourself when you rationalize it in your head.

You had to do it. How could anyone blame you? You were just so overwhelmed that it absolutely warranted picking up the nearest object sharp enough to draw blood and....

Drawing…

Yeah you could be unique and draw pictures or be real distinct in your meaning and write words but you never felt like it. You always go for the classic criss-cross ribbon pattern. It’s just the most appealing to you. You might even go so far as to say its...

Pretty…

It’s not like your feelings are fake or anything. They are most definitely real. It’s just that it’s already poetry to you the second they exists and they constantly beg you to do something.

So you draw.

If there isn't a knife or pair of scissors lying around when you get the itch, you sometimes scratch yourself up with prettier designs. If only your classmates knew that's why the better half of your brain keeps your nails so short.

There’s plenty of reasons for doing it. Perhaps you secretly want attention, or the endorphins from the physical pain to block out the mental. Maybe you subconsciously actually want to die.

No. You know why you do this, and it's the most shallow reason of all. You do it simply because you like the way it looks. Taking masochistic pleasure in the most disturbing of ways might as well be your hobby and you'd be a filthy liar if you said you didn't find it attractive and beautiful on some level.

You know it's wrong. You even know that you'll regret it later. You may be 10 leagues under, but that doesn't stop logical reasoning from overruling your petty teenage aesthetics. Most of the time anyway.

You wish you didn't want it but it's beautiful in ways you can't explain or understand. You want the lines to run down your arms, criss crossed ribbons from your sleeve to your bracelets. You want to say it means something but you have no words. Only a tiny simmering desire to do something awful to your own body.

Just because.

It's not an addiction. You've only done it a couple times before, the people who's websites you take morbid interest in would call you an ammeter but you have a wicked obsession for the obscurity of it all just as bad as they do. It's just that your addiction is the romanticism that surrounds such an awful way of life. Such a burning hell of existence that you know all too clearly. But you do see clearly. enough to be conflicted about liking it yet knowing that you shouldn’t. And that's what makes it “fun”.

Right?

You sigh and run a shaky hand through your dark hair. It's getting longer. Too long to look as nice as you wish it could. You've left it unstyled for a while now. you just didn't feel like it one day and the next day and the next day…..

And then you didn't feel like doing a lot of things.....

All the things.....

You don't want to do anything...

What are you doing exactly? Sitting on the bathroom floor, trying to work yourself up into something that feels worthy of using the pair of scissors you've been flipping over in your hand for the past hour? Scissors? Not even a razor blade? Pathetic. No. You couldn't touch one of those. That's too much and even you have limits. For some reason scissors and pocket knives just don't hold the same weight as the boxes of blades you've seen people buy. That's a level you can't even pretend is nice. You wish you could pretend you didn't find any of it nice but you're such a sucker for poetry, even your deepest honest feelings are subject to editing control and as harsh as you want your words to sound and feelings to be understood you just can't bring yourself to do what they do.....

Small ribbons....

Little scars to trace...

Something tangible to hold onto because you just wanna make it real...

You wouldn't put yourself in that group. You criticize them constantly for "never getting it right". But of course, how could you expect someone else, no matter how much like you they are, to explain why you do what you do?

To feel something? You feel so much already. In fact ,you'd rather someone make it stop. You're always so angry. You never meant to be this way.

Punishment? Maybe. You do hate yourself quite a lot but your self belittlement for all the mistakes no one keeps tallies on but you falls far short of being worthy of penance.

Attention? God no! Why on earth would you hurt yourself just so people would feel bad for you? How shallow do people think you are? 

You are that shallow. You do want people to see it. You'd want them to ask. You'd want the excuse to explain, in the least obnoxious way, all that poetry in your heart. People aren't allowed to just start talking about all the things that make them sick, but you can't help it if the sleeve of your sweater shifts too far down and Feferi sees the lines she'll never know were hers and she'll ask "What happened?" In the softest whisper because for whatever reason she picked up that, on the inside, you are so so fragile. 

You'll look away like you don't desperately want to spill all the little things. All the fucked up idiosyncrasies that compiled together with unfortunate circumstance to cause you to resort to such a horrible thing and you will say

"Nothing....."

But she knows you. Not as much as she thinks, but enough to know that you're not the type of person to keep secrets. She'll wait till class is over, maybe text you to meet her somewhere outside after school. And in the cold, when everyone is fading into the background, she'll carefully take your hand and trace the lines all the way up your wrist, Softly and smoothly the way you meant them to be traced. And when her sad, scared, disappointed gaze finally digs deep enough to make you feel sorry for manipulating her into caring about you, you will spill everything and for once someone will be there to catch you when you fall.

You won't admit that's manipulative. In fact, you'll never acknowledge this thought again. You lock that thought away deep within your brain because you refuse to do that to her. These sociopathic tendencies don't need to involve her. They shouldn't. She should stay far away from you so you can finally forget about her. You could finally think about other things besides her brilliant sea glass green eyes that turn hazel in the fall, and her long black hair that somehow seems more beautiful when it's tangled and unkempt than when she tries to flatten it.

You could talk for days about how much you love her but on the inside you know you don't love anyone like that and if she could just move away you'd be fine. You could exist in the nothingness.You really could. Honest. It's just not in your nature to die. You'll live forever just because they said you couldn't. Spite is what fuels your bitter heart that's far too dark and scarred for your age.

You’re only thirteen.

Everyone else wants to be a teenager, but you feel like you're practically an adult. Everyone always tells you how mature you are, but really, at the deepest level, you just wish you could be a kid again. Because as much as you play the tortured genius (which in all honesty, you really are too smart for your own good) You're still dumb enough to give in to those bullshit teenage mood swings. You know that life doesn't have to be this awful, but you just don't have the tools to fix it. You wish you could have kept your innocence, but you've been hurt too many times to believe that anything could be truly good in this world.

She sees the good in everything. She gives you hope. And when she's sad or upset or anything that isn't pure love for life itself, (The kind of feelings you couldn't even fake.) When she shows even the slightest descent towards whatever purgatory you're trapped in, the shredded remnants of your heart burn up in flames. You want to love her; eternally and forever. Like every awful movie you ever borrowed from Karkat, like every mawkish poem you've ever read in a book, like every song anyone's ever written about love; you want it. You want it so badly, but you can't have it. So you daydream that she loves you like you pretend you love her because if you could ever truly feel something then maybe life wouldn't be so fucking miserable all the time!

You bite your lip, inhaling sharply as you press the cold metal to your wrist just enough for the skin underneath to go white and….

You can't do it. Whatever upsetting state you've worked yourself into, it's not enough to warrant that kind of pain.

Damnit!

Is there a word for being so dead inside you loop back around to being a sensible human being? People do it to stop feeling numb, but you're too numb to do it. How pathetic could you be?

"Fuck it....." You mumble out loud to absolutely no one. You carefully put what you stole back where you found it. It was as if nothing happened here. Nothing really did.

It feels so anticlimactic. You wish you could have made it work. Even if you regretted it, you still wanted to try just one last time because even though you'll hate it and be sick of telling the story when you're all grown up, even if it would be embarrassing and shameful within the next school year if not earlier. Even though it kills you to see her so sad.

At least then she’d understand.

At least you’d get to know what being cared for feels like.

Because of all the billions of things you say and how passionately you say them, you don't have any words to describe the unbearable agony of your empty chest. No words could ever do it justice, so how could you possibly explain to her how badly you need help?

So no. You will continue to suffer in bitter silence while she continues to sing songs so bright they burn. And you’ll fill notebook after notebook with hateful thoughts while she goes out of her way to make people smile. And she'll keep dancing down the sidewalk without a care in the world as you sink deeper and deeper into hopeless despair. And she'll never know that the reason you can't smile anymore is because you simply forgot how.


End file.
